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Updated: June 18, 2025
Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collects round the cabmen's shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, driven furiously. They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded "That's 'Arry 'Icks. Wot's he got?" said the stout gentleman known as Old Tootles.
"I had rather he had been a lady," Curly said. "I wish he had been a white rat," said Nibs. "There was a lady also, and " "Oh, mummy," cried the first twin, "you mean that there is a lady also, don't you? She is not dead, is she?" "Oh, no." "I am awfully glad she isn't dead," said Tootles. "Are you glad, John?" "Of course I am." "Are you glad, Nibs?" "Rather." "Are you glad, Twins?"
She pouted very prettily. "No, they ignored you and Raggles and Tootles. Are there any more in my family that I haven't met?" "You see, we got to the station quite a bit ahead of Edith. That's how you happened to miss meeting us. We saw you there, however. I recognised you by your clothes. You seemed very unhappy. Oh, I forgot. You wanted to know who I am. Well, I am your sister-in-law."
Still no sound, except a little thud from Tootles as he dropped on his knees. "Have you not seen her?" asked Peter, becoming troubled. "She flew this way." "Ah me!" once voice said, and another said, "Oh, mournful day." Tootles rose. "Peter," he said quietly, "I will show her to you," and when the others would still have hidden her he said, "Back, twins, let Peter see."
That which did come next was even more amazing than the unexpected advent of Tootles. He barely had recovered his equanimity with his coffee when a young lady entered the car. That, of itself, was not much to speak of, but what followed was something that not even he could have dreamed of if he had been given the chance.
"Now then, bullies," he said briskly, "six of you walk the plank to-night, but I have room for two cabin boys. Which of you is it to be?" "Don't irritate him unnecessarily," had been Wendy's instructions in the hold; so Tootles stepped forward politely.
After a considerable time spent in casting to the right, the left, and the rear, "True-bouy" chances to take a fling in advance, and hitting upon the scent, proclaims it with his wonted energy, which drawing all his brethren to the spot, they pick it slowly over some brick-fields and flint-beds, to an old lady's flower-garden, through which they carry it with a surprising head into the fields beyond, when they begin to fall into line, and the sportsmen doing the same "one at a time and it will last the longer" "Tummas" tootles his horn, the hunt is up, and away they all rattle at "Parliament pace," as the hackney-coachmen say.
He would have continued to watch and listen until daylight peered upbraidingly through the chinks in the exit doors but for the sudden appearance of Susie Capper, dressed for the street. "Hello, Tootles! But you're not through, are you?" "Absobloominlootely," she said emphatically. "I thought you said your best bit was in the second act?" "'Was' is right. Come on outer here.
He wouldn't have told of the many efforts made by Tootles to pay him back in the only way that seemed to her to be possible, even if he had known of them, he had not been on the lookout for anything of that sort. Nor would he, of course, have gone into the fact that Tootles loved him quite as much as he loved Joan, he knew nothing of that.
He would like to have told Howard all the simple and charming details of that good week, giving him a sympathetic picture of the elfish Tootles enjoying her brief holiday out in the open, and of her recovery under the inspiration of trees and flowers and brotherliness, to all of which she was so pathetically unaccustomed.
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